Digging The Past To Understand Today

A Graduate Student Searches For Peliklikaha And The Truth About Runaway Slaves.

August 26, 2001|By Stephanie Erickson, Sentinel Staff Writer

CENTER HILL -- If only the towering oaks could talk.

They'd save Terry Weik a lot of time. At least three years, the University of Florida graduate student figures.

On a hot Friday morning in central Sumter County, Weik was hunched over, sifting through dirt, not far from grazing cows and crowing roosters. For the umpteenth time, he was beginning the painstaking process of trying to find history in a clump of clay.

The pastureland, about two miles from Center Hill, is also known as Peliklikaha, or dig No. 136 to the Florida Division of Historical Resources.

For Weik, the sweltering day was like dozens of others -- a day of patience, a day of sweat and a day of hope.

Hope that the first-ever excavation of a black Seminole town in Central Florida will unearth how the runaway slaves lived within the embattled Seminole nation. Hope that his team from the University of Florida will help fill in some blanks in the history books.

Runaway slaves -- called Maroons, a term derived from the Spanish word "cimaroones,'' meaning fugitives -- fled to Florida from Georgia and South Carolina. Some survived by living with the Seminoles, said Jerald Milanich, a UF archaeologist and member of the excavation team.

Weik, who has been excavating at the site since 1998, is writing about Peliklikaha for his dissertation, which he plans to finish next year.

He has done similar work in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, excavating on rough terrain, including the sides of mountains.

"It's much different here,'' he said, looking out across the field at a herd of brown and white cows. "This site is really easy to get to."

Peliklikaha is the largest black Seminole village known to historians. Until now, Peliklikaha existed only in the writings of military leaders and a painting commissioned by U.S. Gen. Abraham Eustis, who in 1836 ordered troops to burn the town down.

Peliklikaha was also called Abraham's Old Town, after an escaped slave who was an interpreter for Seminole Chief Micanopy during the Second Seminole War in the early 1800s.

The archeologists zeroed in on the area after researching historical maps and documents. They started by panning out across a large area, looking for items above ground, and then digging 1-foot holes to determine where to expand the search.

The team has found several artifacts near a fence on the west side. The problem: The owner of the land on the other side of the fence won't allow the team onto his property.

Each dig means excavating a 6-foot-square pit. The Sumterville man who owns the land where archeologists have already dug has allowed the team onto his property with one condition: Fill up the holes each day so the cows don't fall in.

But Weik and his team have found dozens of artifacts, which he keeps in labeled plastic bags inside his "goodie box."

Among them: glass beads, pieces of iron, stone, pottery and rusted nails, which they have compared to photographs of artifacts from the same period.

Placing one of the artifacts on the hood of his Nissan Pathfinder, he said, "It's a piece of garbage -- but it's an important piece of garbage to me."

Weik said he couldn't decide which artifact was the most prized find.

"I kind of like all of them,'' he said.

The archeologists map out the clusters where artifacts are found. If they can determine where a house was located, they can determine how the town was arranged, and then better understand the society.

Weik wants to know if the runaway slaves were subservient to the Seminoles or if the blacks' military and interpreting skills made them the leaders.

The African and Seminole Alliance was so powerful that it forced the United States to a stalemate in the three Seminole Wars from 1812-1855.

The Peliklikaha dig could affect the black Seminole community today. A lawsuit filed by the son of a black Seminole leader seeks a share of the $56 million the United States government paid the Seminoles for reparations.

To win their suit against the U.S. government, the black Seminoles must prove they owned land in Florida. A new trial date has not been set in the case, which was filed in 1996.

In a few weeks, Weik will be done with the field work at Peliklikaha. He'll leave behind the crickets, butterflies, "worms, grubs and big huge ants" and bring the artifacts to a laboratory for further analysis.

There, he hopes to begin putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

"History isn't just the past,'' he said. "It affects everything today in a big way."